Second cousins create double-ring celebration

May 07, 2006|GENE STOWE Tribune Correspondent

Late last year, when her close-as-a-brother second cousin couldn't hold back on telling everyone about his engagement, Jennifer Caston was a little jealous. But just briefly. Phil Albert had planned to wait a couple of months before telling family that he and Kim Arnold were engaged. But, Jenn says, "He blurted it out. He couldn't wait." Jenn, who thought she'd become engaged first, confesses, "I was thinking, 'Everybody's going to be real excited about Phil, and what about me?'æ" Not to worry. Her boyfriend, University of Notre Dame football player Mark LeVoir, had plans. One evening he asked Jenn to go with him to the Grotto at Notre Dame. "We had just come back from Tippecanoe (Place Restaurant), from a wonderful dinner with my parents," Jenn says. "He's a real trickster. We go to the Grotto. We pray. We light a candle. We're walking away, and he gives me a box." Jenn's hopes rose, but in that box was an old dating ring that she had quit wearing. She wasn't exactly happy as they walked on, finally sitting on a bench by St. Mary's Lake where the moonlight shone on the Golden Dome, the basilica and the lake. Jenn, confused over the ring, started talking to nearby geese. Mark asked her something, and when she turned, he was on one knee with another ring box. "The first thing I said was, 'Is it real?' He said, 'It is real. Are you going to say yes?'æ" What else would she say? Jenn had liked Mark from the first time she saw him -- at 6 feet 8 inches, the offensive lineman stands 2 feet taller than she -- in an ND dormitory. "Three days later we started dating." That included Mark's tutoring Jenn in math and her cheering him on at pep rallies and football games. "I didn't miss one," Jenn says. Their engagement meant an extra special party for the close Caston and Albert families at Christmastime. "It was really funny telling the family again -- 'There's one more wedding coming,'æ" Jenn says. Her jealousy over Phil announcing his engagement first had passed away in short order. Jenn ended up being thrilled to have something else in common with her second cousin. "It's really neat because we really did everything together ... We hung out together at family functions. We were both only children." Jenn's mother is first cousins with Phil's father. He and his wife helped Jenn's mom when Jenn's dad was traveling after the Castons' move to Granger in 1993. "I call them Aunt and Uncle because they're my mom's age," Jenn says. "We're very close. We can call each other and talk about anything." When the Alberts moved to Florida, Phil stayed with the Castons for the last of his senior year at Penn High School, where Jenn was a freshman. "He literally was like my brother," she says. Now, less than six weeks apart, they will marry: Phil and Kim on May 28 in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Mark and Jenn on July 8 at Notre Dame's Sacred Heart Basilica. "To get engaged at the same time and get married at the same time is really special," Jenn says. "We all had so much fun at our huge party. We were all so equal, and it was great."